Sliding Down Rocks at Rere Rockslide

The Rere Rockslide is a natural 180 foot rock incline with just enough water pouring over it to entice the kid in all of us to risk serious injury.

I had anticipated Rere Rockslide for a couple of weeks.  Various tourist publications suggested that this "natural wonder" could best be enjoyed with a boogie board, inner tube, or blowup mattress.  We assumed that the town near Rere Rockslide would have loads of used boogie boards in their second-hand shops. However, when we arrived during a very hot day and asked at the visitor center, they pointed us to the nearest Warehouse (NZ version of Walmart).

Since we didn't want to buy a new board, only to throw it away after a few slides, we headed to all of the second-hand shops.  No luck.  Next, we trudged around town in the 90 degree heat, on foot and in the van.  The Warehouse was sold out, and our next best option was a $30 board at a lawn and garden shop.  We couldn't bring ourselves to pay that much for a piece of foam that we would use for 30 minutes and then throw away.

As usual, Scott had a "great" idea.  We bought $4 worth of foam padding at a second-hand shop that we planned to wrap around my little surfboard.  We thought this was a good idea until we got to the rockslide and discovered how long, rocky, and bumpy it is.  We didn't want to risk breaking the surfboard, so we used a cracked boogie board from the trash can at the parking lot.  The first slide turned out pretty well (the ending is the best part):

You can watch the following two videos to see how the rest of the slides turned out:

If you can't tell from the videos, we both rode down the rockslide on our hands, knees, and toes for most of the way.  The board got stuck on one of the diagonal cracks.  You would think we would have cut our losses at this point, but we didn't.  Both of us tried again, and both of us lost the board before the end.  Our elbows and wrists were sore for days -- I thought I might have broken something. Now that 3 weeks have passed, I can look back on it and kinda laugh (while cringing).

Link to February Pictures